


A Past, Lost in Space

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: There's Nothing Quite Like It [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 10:25:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every single surviving Jaegar jockey turns up for the memorial service. There are other people - dignitaries, politicians, important people Arya should give a shit about, as well as hundreds of people who lived on the coast, who understand just what the Jaegar Programme did for the world - but aside from Bran, Rickon, Edmure and their grandfathers, Arya doesn’t really see anyone but the other pilots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Past, Lost in Space

**Author's Note:**

> ssh what do you mean I broke hiatus ssh

Arya wakes up, and she panics.

She puts it down to a sudden and overwhelming new case of claustrophobia, but as she thumps desperately at the release mechanism all she can think is  _Sansa Sansa Sansa_ and  _kind of like flying,_ and how empty her head feels.

The choppers arrive within twenty minutes, and Arya fights so hard to make them wait for Sansa that they sedate her. She doesn't think she'll ever forgive any of them for giving up so quickly. Especially not Bryn.

 

* * *

 

Journos keep sneaking into her room - maybe she should have stayed in the med bay in the 'dome, where security is tighter, but everything there was Sansa and she couldn't stand it - and taking pictures. There's not much to see, just saline and electrolytes on IV because she can't quite make herself eat, and her eyes.

They unnerve her when she sees the photos in the papers, never mind everyone else.

The doctors aren't entirely sure what's wrong with her - she gets up and stretches and does some light exercises every morning, just to stave off the atrophy and to wake herself up, but she's listless and only seems to focus on anything when some of her family are there.

They're always there, or near enough - Pappy and Edmure are staying with Bryn, and while he offered rooms to Granddad and the boys, Granddad refused and insisted on staying in a hotel, for some stupid reason. The Martells visit, too - usually just Arianne, because Quentyn is desperately pulling numbers out of his arse to prove to the governmental bigwigs that yes, the Breach is going to remain closed, and he's run ragged coming and going between Lannisport and King's Landing, but that's okay. Arianne is easy company, was Sansa's friend, is insanely pretty, knows how to make Arya laugh. It's okay.

He keeps telling Arya how selfish her and Sansa were, running away in pursuit of glory, and unluckily for him, Pappy is there the first time anything he says makes her cry. They shout at one another across her bed as Bran sneaks her sherbert lemons (against doctors' orders, she's not supposed to have sugar) and hands her a bag when the taste makes her sick (lemon always was Sansa's favourite).

Pappy and Edmure begin staying with her in shifts, breaking hospital rules but not daring to leave her alone with Granddad anymore. Pappy even looks into having Granddad banned from her room, which doesn't work but is a nice gesture.

Edmure always brings apple bakewells like Mum used to make, when there was time. He never brings lemoncakes, and she's grateful for that.

 

* * *

 

Every single surviving Jaegar jockey turns up for the memorial service. There are other people - dignitaries, politicians, important people Arya should give a shit about, as well as hundreds of people who lived on the coast, who understand just what the Jaegar Programme did for the world - but aside from Bran, Rickon, Edmure and their grandfathers, Arya doesn’t really see anyone but the other pilots.

Pappy stands beside her and lets her lean on him until it's time for her to go and lay the wreath - peony roses, deep pink and sweet-smelling, Sansa's favourite - at the foot of the memorial. Usually, Arya would hate looking so weak, but her limbs don't quite work yet, so she's glad that he's there. 

The afters of the service are hell - Bryn and Gerry Lannister wanted her to at least make a statement, maybe even do a full press conference, but Marshal Hightower put his foot down and Arya gets away without having to even let the press take her photo. She gets inside wedged between Pappy and Edmure, Granddad bustling along behind her and Bran and Rickon towering in front of her. It's the first time she's ever been really grateful for how small she is.

There are so many politicians, right up to the Prime Minister, and as soon as they notice Arya and work out who she is, they begin to converge.

She doesn't even need to fake a panic attack to get out of talking to them - she ends up out the back of the hotel, throwing up into an ornamental potted tree while Edmure holds back her hair.

She never did any of this - even before the Event, her and Dad and Jon left it to Mum and Robb and Sansa, and even when her and Jon had to handle something just the two of them, he did the talking. She always had someone to hide behind, but now it's just her and while she knows  _how_ to do it, technically, she just  _can't._

 

* * *

 

She punches Gerry Lannister in front of the whole crowd, including the Prime Minister, and doesn't say a word after. She just walks away, wishing she'd had the foresight to wrap her hands and hoping she didn't break anything except maybe his nose.

Brynden shouts after her, but she ignores him - how _dare_ he side with Gerion fucking Lannister, talking as if he _knew_ Sansa, as if he knew Trys and Ned, as if he knew everyone and he didn't, how dare he, how dare any of them?

How dare the whole fucking lot of them, especially those  _bastards_ who holed up in King's Landing and White Harbour and Gulltown and all the other nice, safe east coast cities, who only ever knew about the kaiju as distant news reports and figures on spreadsheets and  _action figures._

Quent's wife, Wylla, she's a model - underwear, Arya thinks, and she certainly has the boobs for it, Arya might chance her arm if Wylla were a free agent - comes out and leans against the wall beside her, offering a cigarette without a word.

"Can't," she says, thinking of Brandon. "History of lung cancer in the family."

Wylla just nods, because everyone knows about Brandon coughing himself to death because of the hullabaloo the media made of too-pretty-to-pilot Sansa stepping into Lady's conn pod with Dad.

"I wanted to pilot," Wylla says suddenly as she lights a cig. "My sister did, Wyn - she rode with Humfrey Hightower. Rode Humf, too, of course. I didn't get through the first week in the Academy, but I was jumped right into uni for psychology."

"You're a psychologist?"

"Doctor of behavioural psychology," Wylla says, nodding. "But the suits started cutting Quent's funding, and I'd always fooled around with modeling in college, so I went into it seriously to raise money for him. Less for Arianne, but she did benefit from it, I suppose."

Arya considers this, and is struck by Sansa's studying medicine during their down time and her own quest for qualifications.

"We have your boobs to thank for the world being saved, then," she says at last. "If you hadn't gotten that money for Quent, him and Arianne mightn't have been here for her to make him Drift with that kaiju brain with her."

 

* * *

 

She goes back inside and ends up sitting with a bunch of people who have dead brothers and sisters. Tyrion Lannister listened to his sister choke on her own blood from the LOCCENT, Willas Tyrell wears four sets of tags around his neck and a hair ribbon of Sansa's around the grip of his left crutch, Dacey Mormont doesn't quite seem to know how to function without Aly, Arianne keeps turning to complain about Quent and stops short when she remembers Trys isn't there anymore.

They're a pretty gloomy bunch, but at the same time it's nice to not have to explain.

 

* * *

 

Arya doesn't really know what to do with herself after that. 

Part of her thinks that she should find a job working for a civil engineer and live at Winterfell and force Granddad to cope - she thinks that would drive Pappy mad, because he hates that she and Sansa spent so long dealing with Granddad and looking after Bran and Rickon instead of looking after themselves, but it's what Sansa would have done so Arya thinks that it's maybe what she should do, too.

It's not Granddad's fault, really. He's lost everyone except her, Bran and Rickon to the kaiju now, so she thinks she can understand him being... Well, being the way he is. 

But then Bran suddenly steps up, and he can deal with Granddad better even than Sansa could (if Granddad sometimes slips and calls him Brandon, nobody ever mentions it), and Pappy and Edmure and Bran and even Rickon gang up on her to convince her to accept some of the scholarships being thrown her way.

So she goes to college again, this time not in Winterfell or White Harbour or Riverrun but in Lannisport, because it feels right to start over where everything came to an end, and she has so many people wanting her to endorse their stuff that she has enough clothes to dress the nation, and sometimes her throat closes up when some high street chain sends her a pretty floral dress that's  _exactly_ Sansa's style, and she wears it for a day, just one, and lets herself miss her sister.

 

* * *

 

She wears a dress the same shade of blue as Sansa's eyes, Mum's and Robb's and Bran's and Rickon's and Pappy's and Edmure's (and Bryn's, even though she hasn't forgiven him it's kind of unavoidable), and her shoes and blazer are dark grey, like her own eyes and Dad's and Jon's and Granddad's and Brandon's and Lya's and Ben's, the day she dons her cap and gown and walks across the stage to accept her doctorate in mechanical engineering. 

She thinks Sansa would approve of the gesture.

 

* * *

 

She ends up working on a team that dresses up in Hazmat suits and rides into the dead zone where Seagard used to be. They work quickly and efficiently, stripping the Jaegars in the boneyard (because it's not even a graveyard, they were just dumped as if they and their pilots hadn't defended humanity from certain death) of any redeemable tech and hardware.

It's hard work - very physical, so Arya goes home to her tiny little apartment in Lannisport exhausted every night, so she doesn't have time to think. It's perfect, really. She kind of loves it, in a weird way, because it feels like she's helping honour the fallen - mechanical organ donation, so the Jaegars live on in a way their pilots never could.

No doctor would ever allow a transplant from someone who set foot inside a Jaegar, and Arianne is sure to tell her that her metaphor falls flat there, but she ignores her.

 

* * *

 

They end up in the labs, of course - well, they're more like workshops, really, and instead of smelling like rubber and anti-radiation wash-down, she arrives home at night stinking of engine grease and diesel and steel and oxy-acetelyne. It's still hard work - she spends her days haring up and down scaffolding, lugging welding rigs with her - and she loves it. 

The tech isn't recognisable as Jaegar components anymore, not unless you really look hard and know what you're looking for, and that's a relief, kind of. She's not the only one who feels that way, she knows, because Will Tyrell - who she still has never heard say a word, and she wonders if it's a medical thing - doesn't look quite as haunted at work anymore, and Tyrion has started joking and laughing, and sometimes he even flirts.

He's not her type, and he's kind of too old and clearly not over his wife besides, but it's fun to work with him and between the three of them, they do  _good_ work.

Quent works with them sometimes, even though he sometimes forgets that there are people and not just numbers here, and he did once almost knock Arya's highly explosive welding rig from a height, which could have been nasty. Arianne comes by sometimes, too, just to bicker with Quent, and to eat lunch with Arya. They both get on well enough with Tyrion and don't even seem to really notice that Will doesn't talk, and it's nice. It's... Easy. Comfortable.

 

* * *

 

People start talking about the medical applications of the Drift tech, and Arya aches for Sansa, remembering her sister asking her about just this thing. Doctor Mallister shakes her hand firmly and sympathises briefly when he meets her, and Arya immediately understands why Sansa liked working with him so much.

One of the first things they work on is prosthetic limbs. Will Tyrell and Fred Manderly are their guinea pigs - nobody dares even whisper about bias, not where Jaegar pilots are concerned - and when Will stands up unaided and Fred signs her name, nobody dares say a word about the tears in everyone else's eyes. 

When Humfrey Hightower, who was told he'd never stand again, walks across the room, nobody knows how the hell they're supposed to react.

 

* * *

 

Bryn has stomach cancer. 

Arya knew, logically, that it was possible - he and Gerry piloted the first and worst, in safety terms, of the Jaegars. She doesn't want to go and see him, on some levels, but then Arianne pushes her into the car and drives her to the hospital, so she does and he's all skinny and saggy looking, and his hair - the same colour as Sansa's - has all fallen out, even his eyebrows.

"You look shit," she says, plopping down on the chair beside his bed and taking his hand. "Sorry I've been an arse, Bryn."

"Nah," he says, waving it away and squeezing her fingers - his hand is cold, and his skin feels paper thin. "I was a bit of a bollocks too, Arya. Let it go."

So she does. She sits with him every day after work after that.

 

* * *

 

Bryn's funeral is uncomfortable, in a strange way - the only other person Arya ever actually saw buried in a coffin in a grave was Brandon, and she can tell that all the other jockeys who are here feel the same.

She holds Pappy's hand the whole way through, holding tighter when Edmure gets up to give the homily or whatever it's called. Gerry is sitting on Pappy's far side, and Arya feels kind of bad for not getting on with him, so after they've buried Bryn she goes to him to offer her sympathies, ignoring the way his shit-scary brother stares at her.

He tells her how lucky she is that she didn't have to watch Sansa go through treatment, and that floors her so completely that she can't even turn and walk away.

 

* * *

 

She doesn't want to ask Pappy or Granddad or Bran or Rickon, and the idea that Arianne might have known and didn't tell her terrifies her, so she asks Willas Tyrell because he has one of Sansa's hair ribbons tied around his wrist and another one holding the chains of his and his brothers' and sister's tags together around his neck.

"Lung cancer," he croaks, smiling grimly. "We used to write letters."

Arya's never heard him talk before, and she kind of wishes she never had.

At least now she knows why Sansa was so calm about dying, that day.

 

* * *

 

The memorial goes up on Bear Island, right alongside their Jaegars and Kodiak and the rest. It feels good, seeing Sansa's name on the wall of fallen heroes, and Arya feels like she's finally done right by Sansa's memory, somehow.

Rickon designed the statue, which surprised everyone, but he's secretly amazing at this stuff. 

"Come on, kiddo," Arianne says quietly, Arianne who wears her memorials all over her skin so she never, ever forgets all that her family did to save the world. She tucks her hand into Arya's elbow, and that feels kind of right, too. "Let's go home."


End file.
